17.4.24
I swear that with each year, British directors get more impressive and skilful with their debut films. Electrifying, tense and culturally rich, Monkey Man greatly balances self-aware action against a fleshed-out backdrop of Hindu nationalism, a bold first outing from one of the UK’s most promising leading men Dev Patel.
Monkey Man is set in a fictional Indian city called Yatana – a sleaze-soaked urbanscape where every vice has a price tag. It’s the kind of place where money and power breed corruption, keeping the poor utterly invisible. Words like gritty and scuzzy don’t begin to describe the seedy underbelly Patel thrusts us into. He both directs and stars as the lead Kid, a human punching bag who comes up with a plan to avenge a past wrong. It’s not a wholly original concept: with themes of retribution and physical improvement through training always being seen as woven into the fabric of the archetypical revenge movie. Patel brings a fan’s appreciation of the genre to his film-making and does not attempt to hide his references. He makes light of being compared to John Wick, for example in the scene when the gun dealer says he has the same gun as from the film series but a ‘made in China’ version.
In the fight sequences, Patel looks to Indonesia for inspiration. He attempts to match both the sympathetic everyman quality and the bloodbath intensity of action phenomenon Iko Uwais, star of The Raid. The highlight of the film is one of the final fight scenes, with many of them feeling like end-of-level boss fights. Kid has to work his way up to get to the big shots, including the corrupt and sadistic chief of police (Sikandar Kher), who impressed me as an incredibly imposing villain who would not be out of place in a video game such as The Last of Us. The film also refers tangentially to tribal land grabs and slum clearances, and a simmering Modi-esque culture of division and hostility, but it is all a little too vague to coalesce into actual political commentary. But that’s not so important; what is, though, is that Dev Patel cements himself both as an action star with A-list ambitions and a competent, resourceful B-movie director.
Some plot points work better than others, for example, his allyship with the transgender Hijra community feels tacked on. Thus, Monkey Man is not perfect, but it does not have to be. The film feels alive, with all the rush of Drive or Uncut Gems. Just like Patel, this is a film which reflects the best of what the East and the West have to offer cinematically. A killer debut.